


talking in my sleep

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Author’s Well-Known Fixation on how the Resistance Keeps the Lights On and Ammunition Stocked, Dark Past, Dreams, Exogol, Force Ghosts, Force-Sensitive Finn, Found Family, General Finn, Jedha, Jedi Finn, M/M, Original Trilogy as History, Politics, Post-Canon, Rogue One As History, Tatooine, Team as Family, The Dark Side of the Force, The Force, Wobani, dagobah, stormtroopers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22661935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: After Exogol, Finn starts having these really weird dreams.
Relationships: Finn & Jannah (Star Wars), Finn & Rose Tico, Finn/Kylo Ren, Lando Calrissian & Jannah, Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey
Comments: 22
Kudos: 112





	talking in my sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peradi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/gifts).



> For 12 days of fandom Christmas, Radi asked me for Finn/Kylo. This is absolutely not as gory or gritty as her usual but I hope she likes it anyway. <3
> 
> Thank you to Niamh for reading it over.

The Battle of Exogol was a great victory, but it wasn't the first great victory Finn had ever known, and it wouldn't be the last. There was the triumph, of course, there was the sweet almost sickening relief of colliding with wild-eyed Poe and bloodied, fragile Rey and knowing that whoever else had died - too many, Finn felt it like a punch to the gut -  _ they had not _ . And there was cheering. Loads of cheering. And Jannah and the other ex-stormtroopers looking a bit stunned, in a good kind of way. And a lot of congratulations from voices Finn had never heard, but Rose (who seemed to be matching voices to names, and was looking increasingly sour) clearly knew. 

“Poe,” he said, into Rey's shoulder, “Poe, we gotta get ahead of this, come on.”

“Ugh,” Poe said, clutching them both a little tighter. “I know. I know.”

“What?” Rey said, puzzled, and they both chorused “Politics,” in reply.

Rey growled something in a language Finn recognised as Huttese but only Poe could translate. He laughed.

“Didn't think Jedi knew words like that.”

“This one does,” Rey said, without any of the flinching or discomfort or hidden anxiety that Finn remembered from previous comments about her vocation. Poe smiled, and Finn kissed her cheek.

“I'm going to find General Calrissian,” Finn said. “I bet he knows what to make of this.” 

Over the next six hours, it became clear that General Calrissian very much did know what to make of this. While there were certainly celebrations, Finn quickly found himself dragged into the dirty work of getting this ragtag coalition into the beginnings of an ordered force, treating with the Provisional Senate, and generally making it clear that the Resistance had not died gallantly (so couldn’t be eulogised and ignored) and that the First Order had not died treacherously (and therefore definitely couldn't be cursed and ignored). General Calrissian was the one doing the dragging, and he seemed to have a name on every document and a voice in every conference.

“I didn’t plan on signing up again,” General Calrissian said nostalgically. “I thought I was done.”

“Yeah, you sure look done,” Poe said, flicking through a stack of legally binding commitments slid under various wealthy and well-supplied noses by General Calrissian and signed in the heat of the moment. “You know, there's someone you need to meet. Rose Tico. Kaydel is - was - the General’s right hand woman, for politics. Rose was her left hand, for everything else.”

Poe swallowed hard. Finn gripped his shoulder and shook it a little. It was still hard to say  _ was _ and mean the General. 

“I’ll go introduce you,” said Poe, a little hoarsely. 

“No need,” General Calrissian said genially. “I already met Quartermaster Tico. She's helping some of our reformed buckethead friends find berths. Now, what I need your eye on right now is this -“ and he handed Poe a draft.

Poe's weary eyes skittered down it. “What's this?”

“The Resistance is not purely a military operation,” General Calrissian said. “Or at least it wouldn’t have been if Leia had been able to expand it the way she wanted. You're going to need a Council. This is what it should look like.”

Poe gave him a look Finn couldn't read, and handed Finn the draft.

_ Council of the Resistance _ , it was headed.  _ Admiral Poe Dameron, Air Forces Chief Commander. General Finn ——, Ground Forces Chief Commander. Quartermaster-General Rose Tico, Head of Logistical Corps. Surgeon-General Kalonia, Head of Medical Corps. Rey ——, Jedi Advisor. Councillor Lando Calrissian, Finance and Logistics. Commander Jannah ——-, Advisor: Special Portfolio, First Order Defectors... _

There were a lot of names Finn did not know and a whole lot of regulations, too, when he scrolled down to the bottom. 

“Kind of short on surnames around here, aren’t we,” said General Calrissian, who was apparently Councillor Calrissian. 

“Uh, yeah,” Finn said, leaving out the distracted and frantic way Rey had been carrying on prior to disappearing into the skeleton of the Death Star, which kind of suggested that she had found some things out and maybe didn’t like them at all. “So... getting pretty serious now, right.”

“It's a command structure,” Poe said, taking back the draft. “Fundamentally, it's a command structure. Lando's right. We need it all in place and official-looking before this moment gets away.”

Finn's stomach rumbled. “When did we all last eat?” he said. 

Poe returned a distracted mumble and rubbed uncomfortably at his wounded arm - Finn kept seeing him do that, and there was a tight line between his eyebrows. Finn rubbed his hands over his face. 

“You deal with that. I’ll be right back.”

Outside the command bubble, everything was well and truly go. Finn hadn't realised how much space other people were instinctively giving to what had been General Organa's private office and then her deathbed. He hadn't had time to think about it and in any case wasn't disturbed by it, since he somehow felt that General Organa might be dead but she wasn't gone. Confused by the maelstrom outside the office, Finn sought out Rose, who would know what was going on. Kaydel - who was conversing in fluent Mon Calamari with someone important-looking and didn't take her eyes off the dignitary for a second - semaphored him in the direction of a massive tent that smelled good, where they turned out to have waved Rose off a few minutes ago, after she'd fixed the boiler. They sent Finn to the medical bay, where things were mostly quieter, and where Finn ran Rose to earth in a quiet corner. She was sitting on the floor with Rey's head on her lap. Rey looked as if she'd passed out where she happened to be standing, and she was sleeping the sleep of the perfectly exhausted, but someone had persuaded her to wash and change into scrubs and had got the blood off her, so it was a net win. 

“She's okay,” Rose said. “Just very tired. Dr Kalonia says she came in here and said she wanted to try something, and then she just started... laying hands on people, and closing her eyes, and their injuries disappeared. Little stuff mostly, but that meant the medics could work on the big stuff.”

Finn sat down next to Rose and absorbed this. “She did heal a giant serpent monster the other day,” he said at last. “I guess. Anyway, how did that go down?”

Rose didn’t even blink. “They made her wash her hands.”

Finn looked sideways at Rose and found she was looking sideways back at him, and then they were both laughing, quiet and tired. Rey's hands - peeking out from under someone's treasured lumpy homemade blanket - were very clean. 

“Are you okay?” Finn asked, because it seemed important.

Rose hesitated for a long moment and then nodded. 

Finn waited, in the hope that she would elaborate. She seemed pained and sore in a way he hadn't seen her since the Battle of Crait. Given that he himself had been pretty concussed back then, he wasn't sure if she was maybe worse now.

Instead she said: “What do you need?”

“Um, some food,” Finn said. “And some painkillers for Poe, his arm's hurting him and he won't do anything about it.”

“Okay,” Rose said, “okay,” and made to get up. 

Something told Finn that was a bad idea. “Hey,” he said, putting a hand on her arm. “I meant food for you too. Tell me who to talk to. You just rest here.”

Rose nearly laughed again, and then she called “Ilix!” and an Twi'lek orderly who couldn't be more than fifteen appeared from nowhere. “This is Finn, he needs food and he needs some basic medical care for General Dameron, the moron forgot to ask for a medic. Can you take care of him?”

Ilix took Finn away and provided him with food, and Finn sent him with a medical kit to tackle Poe while Finn returned to the medical tent with food for Rose and Rey. Rose had already fallen asleep, but that was fine. He'd thought to bring a cover for their plates.

  
  


_ Finn is lying in a dark canyon, where the only light is bluish and the sky, such as it is, looms. When he sits up there are bodies around him, and there's a familiar feel - faint, like dying smoke, but there - that he knows. It used to bring him out in a cold sweat between his shoulder blades, soaking his regulation blacks under his armour. He tries to bolt to his feet, but there's a hand on his chest, broad and pale, with heavy knobbly fingers and a strong wrist, and when it pushes him down it's gentle. _

Easy _ , says the man attached to the hand,  _ easy, Finn. They are dead. They won't hurt you.

_ Finn opens his mouth, because from what little Rey will say dead is not as definitive as it used to be. _

And anyway, _ continues the man,  _ I'm here. 

_ Finn stares at him. The man is wearing a baggy shirt, and less baggy trousers and boots; all of it as black as his loose hair. His awkward profile is unfamiliar, and so are his movements - loose-limbed and strangely jerky, without the controlled, rigid grace Finn's mind wants to superimpose on his frame - but his voice is not. Finn used to hear it filtered through a vocoder. But then it didn’t creak, and it wasn't wry. _

_ And yet there's something else too, something not superficial, something Finn doesn't know.  _

You're not him, _ Finn replies, and doesn’t quite get why. _

I am and I'm not _ , says Kylo Ren, who's Ben Solo, who isn't, who's neither.  _

Where are we? _ Finn asks, wondering whether to kill him. _

This is Exogol, _ says Kylo.  _ It's meant as a trap for you. A side-show, really. They lost what they wanted when Rey lived. But they wouldn't turn up their nose at you.

And what are you here for? To walk me into it?

_ Kylo turns eyes that are just like General Organa's on his.  _ No _ , he says.  _ I'm here in case somebody shows up to try to collect.

_ In his hand is a lightsaber that Finn knows, but only because Rey showed it to him. It belonged to Princess Leia, after she found a brother, but before she became the General.  _

Go back to sleep, Finn _ , Kylo says.  _ Let me pay down my debts.

Finn did not waste any time thinking about his strange dreams. He barely had time to waste sleeping. Between his rapidly expanding forces, and negotiations with other groups that suddenly wanted in on the Resistance's heroic glory and freedom deal, and Jannah getting him to record messages for stormtroopers to prove that FN-2187 hadn't been a dream, and Kaydel hauling him in to look brave and proud for dignitaries, and - oh yes - fighting the First Order, Finn found he had very little time for anything. Except eating. Sometimes Rey would grab him by the ear and shut him into a darkened room until he slept, but really, up, down, day and night were taking on less and less importance every day. Finn wasn't even sure what day it was today. He was, however, confident that there was too much to do in it.

Still, some moments stood out, and this - this quiet awed moment of standing on the bridge of a nearly new capital ship the day before its acquisition became public, remembering that there was a time when the Resistance was only a few meagre shuttles being shot out of the sky one by one - was a moment to stand out. Finn ran his hand along a rail, and stared out at the stars.

“Isn't she lovely?” Rose said. She was sitting on the captain's dais, cross-legged on the floor, playing with the entry token wrapped around her fingers.

“Can we afford this?” Finn asked.

Rose nodded. 

“She got a name yet?” 

Rose nodded again. “Welcome to the  _ Leia Organa _ .”

Finn felt all the breath whoosh out of his chest. “Rey's gonna cry all over you, you know that, and so is Poe. And maybe Lando. Definitely Chewie.”

Rose's mouth twitched. “They already have. When we get a star destroyer... when we get star destroyer _ s _ . I'll have to put the names to the Council. I got this one through easily, but I don't know that the others will be that simple.”

“What’s your first choice?”

“The  _ Paige Tico _ ,” Rose said. She twisted the token over and over until Finn thought it was going to snap. 

“Count on my vote,” Finn said.

Rose smiled at last, and nodded.

It would take days to walk all over a capital ship, and Rose and Finn did not try. Rey and Poe were down in the engines, somewhere a mile beneath their feet, and Jannah was investigating troop quarters, while Kaydel picked over last-minute arrangements for tomorrow's opening ceremony with a white-haired watery-eyed aide who had once known Senator Bail Organa. Rose and Finn walked at random, and caught a lift at random, and eventually fetched up in a medical bay.

Rose gave Finn a very weird look. “Why are we here?”

“I don't know. I was following you.”

“I was following you,” Rose retorted, and Finn shrugged. 

“Well, we're here now,” he said, and opened a door at random - and then he blinked and stared.

It was a private room. Empty, of course, but when Finn looked into it he somehow thought he saw a weary fair-haired young man with his arm around his darker sister, both dressed in white and staring out into a deep-space sky nothing like the near-orbit view just beyond the plasteel. He blinked again, and they were gone. There had been medical equipment and a hospital bed, all of it looking decades out of date, and now there wasn't anything at all.

“Well I guess Dr Kalonia can use this as an office,” Rose said, very practically.

“Yeah, that would be good,” Finn said, and closed the door. “Uh, Rose. Do you know when this ship was built?”

Rose shrugged. “She was built new for the Rebellion, thirty years ago, and refitted from the engines up for us - but of course a lot of the shell is still the same. Why?”

“No reason,” Finn said unconvincingly. “Just curious.”

_ This time wherever Finn is has such a low ceiling that he sits straight up and bangs his head on it. There's a bed - a tiny one, covered in ragged brown blankets - but he wasn't lying on it; he was on the floor. And he stubs his toe on the stove on the way out. _

Shit _ , he says to Kylo Ren,  _ you bring me to all the nicest places.

_ Kylo Ren's crooked grin is just like Han Solo - a comparison Finn doesn't want to make, but one that leaps out.  _ This was your idea. I followed you. 

Wait a minute, you -

I only know when you're getting into trouble, _ Kylo says, steady and calm.  _ The same way my mother knows for Rey. 

The General's Rey's teacher _ , Finn snaps. _ You didn't teach me shit.

I sure as hell didn't mean to,  _ Kylo says, sounding vaguely chagrined.  _

What about this is trouble? _ Finn says, and swats a massive bug that doesn't seem to know this is a dream.  _ Besides the wildlife. Man, I hate swamps.

You and me both, _ Kylo says.  _ Pick somewhere better next time. This is a planet called Dagobah. A great Jedi master lived here. He trained my uncle.

I don't like his taste in real estate _ , Finn snaps. In the distance, something whispers, and when Finn listens for it, he hears too much. _

The Dark Side,  _ Kylo says, watching Finn's face closely as he recoils.  _ It's a kind of... well, I guess. A spring. But it's also a mirror.

Sorry what _ , Finn says. _

It takes what you bring it _ , Kylo says.  _ Anger, fear, pain, compassion, love. It makes your nightmares out of your baggage, and how you react tells you what kind of Jedi you are. Or should not be.

Favourite holiday spot of yours? _ Finn snipes. _

Can't stand it.  _ Kylo's tinkering with a very small screwdriver and his mother's lightsaber, which seems dangerous to Finn in more ways than one.  _ But if you leave it alone, it will leave you alone.

Is that a general rule? _ Finn swipes back at him.  _

I wish _ , says Kylo, and for however long that Finn is sleeping in his bunk and kicking his heels on Dagobah, they ignore each other completely.  _

The First Order kept prisoners of many kinds, in many different kinds of prison, but just at present Finn was concerned with the kind of prison where they put prisoners of conscience. It was worse than the ones they put murderers in, and certainly more secure, because while the murderers killed people the prisoners of conscience were trying to kill the very idea of the First Order. But all prisons need sewage facilities, and while the First Order had taken a lively interest in most parts of Finn's background - he could tell from the customised attempts to kill him - they'd paid very little attention to the time he'd spent in sanitation. 

Either that or it was too expensive to upgrade the plumbing. Councillor Calrissian had a wonderful way with bankers, and in some very key places the First Order were getting wonderfully short on supplies. 

Rey nearly kicked Finn in the face.

“Remind me why you're here,” Finn said to Rey, whose clambering and scrambling abilities were unparalleled, but who was also a massive high-value target. Which made two high-value targets on one raid. Poe would not be thrilled when he got to hear about it, and Finn could already hear Chewbacca yelling. These days the Resistance wasn't so low on manpower that it was necessary for multiple members of High Command to walk into the enemy's dens at once: in fact, it was considered a very bad idea. 

Rey, who had disguised herself by dressing in a boiler suit that wasn't white, pulling her hair into one bun instead of three, and keeping her lightsaber in an inside pocket, hauled herself to the top of a ladder and dragged him up after her. “Because the Force is with me,” she said. “And because you need someone who knows what one of these places looks like on the inside.”

The First Order was keeping these particular prisoners on an old Imperial prison planet called Wobani. The previous prison nexus, the one that had turned from an Imperial prison to a Republican one and had then become a First Order one, had been bombed to hell and back by the Resistance early in the war, but they hadn't been able to hold the whole planet. Once they'd retreated, the First Order had beached an ancient star destroyer that was no longer spaceworthy, and made it into a massive prison. Finding the bloody thing wasn't a problem, but finding the correct wing in a ship larger than some cities...

Well, that was why Rey was along, and given that she'd tracked down the detention block with a speed they could never have achieved otherwise, Finn ought to be grateful. Finn was instead counting down the seconds until his distraction was due outside, by which time they needed to be in possession of the prisoners and moving. 

Rey crept along the half-height vent that ran beneath the prison corridor, and Finn waved his strike team up behind him. Rey paused twenty metres away, and then pointed directly up and nodded emphatically.

_ Interrogative _ , signed one of the team. 

_ Prisoners directly above _ , Finn signed back.  _ Per plan Red Five entry. Distraction entry central node. Reinforcement team wait here. _

Finn got a complicated look in return. It was hard to tell, given the dim emergency lighting strips that were all that illuminated the vent, but Finn was very used to the variety of twisted I-don’t-want-to-ask expressions he got when interpreting Rey's less clear communications. He could pick them out a mile off, these days. But there were no complaints as he led the distraction team back along to the spot where the vent kinked and ran directly beneath the central command node, where there would be bored guards and camera banks. 

Twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three, Finn counted in his head, while a Rodian with a genius for engineering that approached Rey's own carefully unscrewed the access panel above. After a few moments they grimaced, and signed that someone was standing directly on top of the panel.

_ Fine, move fast _ , Finn signed back. 

The panel fell in and the stormtrooper that crashed through met a truncheon wielded by one of the Rodian's colleagues so quickly they didn't even have time to yell. Finn leapt up through the access panel and stunned the second trooper, catching them before they dropped and lowering them onto the floor as his own troops poured up through the access panel and Finn himself examined the bank of computers. There was a clock Finn recognised running down from ten minutes, and a fingerprint-locked keypad. Finn swore: a dead man’s switch. Even if they could get either trooper conscious within ten minutes, all they would have to do is hold out for a few seconds until the alarm went off. 

“Okay, people. Ten minutes, ten prisoners, let's get moving.”

“Sir,” came a gratifyingly ready chorus, and Finn stationed two of his people to lock down the corridor and watch the cameras while he hurried back to where Rey had just cut through the bars of the first cell. She looked worried, which was not good.

“Finn, they’re sick. They need a hospital. One of them - I don't know. I need to go with them.”

Finn glanced into the cell, where three tattered individuals wearing the robes of the Guardian of the Whills lay. His heart sank; it looked like they'd not been fed, or had been fed something that calculatedly disagreed with them, over the course of weeks. Even the politicians in the other cells didn't look so bad, but some people reacted to religion in very funny ways. Maybe the chief jailer was one of those people. Finn remembered the violent insistence that the Force was a lie from his own truncated childhood.

“Go,” he said. “We only have -“ nine minutes and four seconds, his brain told him. “We don't have long.”

“Here,” Rey said, and tossed Finn her lightsaber, which was just as well because there was no faster way of getting into the cells. Finn cut his way in to the last seven cells - the politicians, unlike the Guardians, had not been held together - and pulled them out as fast as possible, which was not very fast considering the state of them. The Guardians were no doubt the weakest, but some of the politicians had been more badly beaten. They were all out when the alarm blared and troopers broke into the sealed corridor, and Finn - mostly instinctually - deflected several blaster shots with the bar of yellow light Rey's saber had become.

“Jedi!” screamed a lead officer, rage apparent even through the vocoder.

“Wrong!” Finn screamed back, and shot back through the access panel even as a massive explosion rocked the beached ship. One distraction, right on time. 

_ This time Finn wakes to tall forests and singing in the distance, and the long-forgotten smoke of a pyre. There's nothing there any more, only an old scorched overgrown place; but Finn can still smell the smoke. _

_ His unwelcome companion is still hanging around like a bad smell, though Finn will admit he no longer jumps out of his skin when he sees Kylo fucking Ren, who doesn't any more look, move, or talk like Kylo Ren, and who never comes within four metres of Finn at any time.  _

_ The way he sits down on a log and says:  _ What a dump. I'm pretty sure I was conceived a couple of klicks west of here _ , reminds Finn way more of General Organa's particular brand of cheerful crudity - the one she used to pull out when elegance and gravity didn’t fit the moment - than Finn wants it to. But he can't pretend the resemblance isn't there. He has never been good at pretending to himself. _

What the fuck _ , Finn replies.  _

We're on a moon of Endor _ , Kylo Ren says.  _ Not the one where the Death Star crashed, the other one.

Where the Battle of Endor was won,  _ Finn says. _

_ Kylo Ren nods.  _ Lucky your friends didn't crash here. I'm pretty sure the Ewoks would have eaten them.

_ Finn doesn't ask what the hell an Ewok is. _

This is also where my mother found out she was a Jedi _ , Kylo says.  _ The way my uncle Luke used to tell it, there were so many signs beforehand she just didn’t pay any attention to, and in the end he came out and said it here. She didn't want to believe it at first. 

Why?

Well, I never understood it this way when I was alive, because nobody ever explained it to me and I never thought about it _ , says Kylo.  _ But my mother inherited her Force-sensitivity from her birth father, a man who held her back while her planet disintegrated. She was not interested in his legacy.

I mean, yeah _ , Finn says,  _ that makes sense.

_ Kylo kicks idly at the log he's sitting on. He seems shorter, now, and slimmer, in the baggy shirt. The master of the Knights of Ren was a mountain of a man. This guy is just someone who maybe has trouble finding beds his feet won’t stick out of.  _

_ Maybe it's the way he holds himself. _

Yeah _ , Kylo Ren says,  _ it makes sense.

Is he a ghost too? Do I have to put up with Darth Vader wandering through my dreams? Is Yoda going to be round to say hi?

_ Kylo shrugs.  _

_ Finn pokes around the clearing, but - in light of what Kylo said about Ewoks eating people - doesn't do what he normally would, which is follow the sound of singing and find some people who can get him off this dump. He's not sure you can be eaten alive in a dream, but he's hallucinating Kylo Ren. It can probably get worse. _

My point is,  _ Kylo says,  _ there's never just one Jedi. 

Yeah?

Do you want to think about some of the things you've done lately, in light of that idea?

_ Finn stares at him.  _ No _ , he says, categorically. _

Sure, whatever, _ Kylo says, and then looks over at the burned ground with a crinkle in his eyebrows.  _ I'll be here when you figure it out, but hurry it up. I can't always be around.

Busy social life? _ Finn jibes. _

_ Kylo scowls.  _

_ In order to avoid having to deal with this, Finn wakes all the way up _ . 

The great thing about fighting with Jannah and her crew of stormtroopers - now somewhat reduced from the original company, due to illness and injury and deaths in battle - was that they understood exactly how Finn worked. They'd all been trained to work the exact same way. Except that now they actually got to design a strategy that worked, and that was informed by the principles of force preservation, rather than whatever somebody called Hux had decided was glorious.

Finn was still confused as to why Armitage Hux had turned, however briefly and ineffectively, to the Resistance; Jannah had been too, when he told her about it. The two of them had picked it over minutely and had only been able to conclude that Hux really was as petty as he'd always acted, and that when he'd been shot he'd mostly got what he deserved. He’d probably never believed the Resistance had any kind of chance at liberating the galaxy, but he'd known they would concentrate their fire on Kylo Ren. And then, Ren out of the way, he could really have risen in the ranks. 

“Nothing to choose between them,” Jannah had snorted. “Murderers all round.”

Finn wondered if that had been true, at the end. Rey was slowly starting to talk about the amphitheatre on Exogol, but given that she had been drained by Palpatine, repeatedly hit on the head, and had maybe temporarily died, her narrative wasn't coherent and she didn’t really understand it.

Anyway: whatever their differences, it was always good to work with Jannah, and they made a strikingly good team, especially as he never had to worry about dramatically timed fits of heroism (Poe, who said he had the exact same issue with Finn) or irresistible promptings of the Force (Rey: enough said). Jannah had turned out to be a great guerrilla fighter. Her command track training had probably amplified some kind of gift for force integration, too, because her ex-stormtroopers were now working very effectively with various special troops seconded to the Resistance. And Jannah never seemed to find making that happen terribly difficult, which was slightly frustrating, because managing the egos of all the other ground military commanders involved in the Resistance was Finn's biggest headache. 

He told her so, while they were pazaak in the cramped command quarters of their getaway ship, after a successful lightning strike on shipyards supplying the slowly diminishing First Order. (Wedge Antilles had gone thin-lipped at the name of the company in charge, and said that he and Leia had always been close to proving that they were still card-carrying Imperials but they'd never been close  _ enough _ , which only went to show that things went around and came around and never really changed.)

“Can’t you use your - you know.” Jannah twiddled her fingers at him. “ _ I have a feeling _ type stuff.”

“That's just something that happens in battles. I’ve been in too many battles.”

“Yeah, but it's weird, Finn.”

Finn shrugged uncomfortably. “It works.”

“So make it work on these guys.” Jannah laid down an ace, and scooped a pile of tokens in her direction. “Committee meetings are just another kind of battle, right?”

“I don't think it works like that,” Finn said. “And anyway, even if it does, it shouldn't.” He resettled himself on the bench, and shoved a cushion behind his back, for lumbar support. His back still ached sometimes when it rained, and it had been very rainy in the shipyard. “How’s your search for a family?”

“Kind of stalled,” Jannah said frankly. “There's a war on.”

Finn grimaced. It seemed like the right kind of face to pull, under the circumstances. 

“It's fine.” Jannah sat back and waited for him to play his turn. “I'll find them. Just because they don't have a geneprint doesn't mean they aren't out there. Ninety-five percent of the galaxy can't afford a geneprint.”

Finn laid down some cards: a building manoeuvre, trying to draw out the rest of what he suspected was a very good hand.

“Do you want to look for your family?”

“I already have a family,” Finn said. What was it Maz Kanata had said to Rey, a thousand years ago when Han Solo was still alive? You already know; the people you are looking for, they are never coming back. 

“I mean your birth family.”

“I know what you mean,” Finn said, and was suddenly so annoyed he threw all his cards in. “Rey went looking for her birth family, and all she found out was that they sold her and then they died. Made her miserable.”

That wasn't all they'd found out, but Rey had decided to leave the past in the past, where it most definitely belonged. Finn was pretty much of her mind, except that he didn’t have anything to go on at all, not even a memory.

“Maybe you were the son of a Jedi,” Jannah said. “Hidden away in secret!” 

“You and your holodramas.” Finn rolled his eyes.

“Lando keeps finding me more,” Jannah said. “I like them.”

“Don't take this the wrong way,” Finn said. “I think you already found your family, too.”

There was a strange pause and a strange look on Jannah's face, caught between vulnerable and smiling. She chucked her cards in too, and collected up the discards, tapping them into a coherent pile, her movements perfect and precise. Her feet tucked up in a neat pretzel like this was a troopers' dorm, instead of the eight square metres of personal space allotted to the commander of this vessel, whosoever they might be. 

It was strange, Finn thought, being a stormtrooper without a helmet. There were so many things you couldn't hide any more. 

_ Finn wakes up with his feet in a red rock wall, and though he doesn't know where he is he immediately knows why he is. When he takes his feet out of the wall and stands up he looks around for Kylo, and sees only a distant blue glow. _

Along here _ , Kylo yells. _

_ Finn follows along. The walls are glittering, he notices, but in chunks and pieces, not an even sparkle. When he stops to squint at them and run his fingers over sandstone, he realises they're crystals. They sing like Rey's lightsaber crystal, which makes them kyber. _

_ Where the hell in the galaxy has walls of kyber crystal, is what Finn wants to know. _

Not a lot of places _ , replies Kylo, so maybe he said that out loud.  _ This one is Jedha.

It's a mess _ , Finn says bluntly. Once these were beautiful water-carved tunnels, with lamps set into alcoves, and the soft tread of pilgrims’ feet still embedded in the sandy floor. Now the decore owes a lot more to high explosive than it should. _

The Empire's mess _ , says Kylo,  _ the first test of the first Death Star, and they got the crystals here.

Killing off the spare parts source?  _ Finn says.  _ Dumb.

Not if you never intend to have a rival,  _ Kylo says, voice echoing oddly in the twisting tunnels, and that's Finn's only excuse for going round a corner and crashing straight into him. He has a broad back, but pointy shoulder blades. Finn's nose throbs with pain. _

Look where you're going,  _ Kylo says, without any bite. He's holding a lightsaber up to the wall, watching the way the blue light drapes over the crystals embedded in the rock.  _

_ Finn nearly apologises, and then he realises who he's talking to. _

I need to ask you something,  _ he says instead.  _

_ Kylo braces like it's going to be awful. _

Can you be a Jedi and not know it?

_ Inexplicably, Kylo relaxes. Maybe he thought Finn was going to have another go at him about all the war crimes? But they have covered that, extensively, in previous meetings on lava planets and deserted museums that used to be Jedi nurseries and one weird mountainy mossy slate grey planet where Kylo said the seeds of the Empire's destruction had been sown, and as far as Finn's concerned there's nothing left to be said. It's the only thing that Finn knows for sure to Kylo's credit: when a living man asks his dead self questions, he gives truthful answers. _

_ Finn has slept very badly because of some of those answers, but he was the one who asked. _

Yes _ , Kylo says, in reply to Finn's question.  _ My mother managed it for the best part of twenty-five years. 

_ Finn's coming up on twenty-five, so that seems reasonable.  _

I thought it was just for fighting,  _ he says,  _ but maybe - and Rey's gone off somewhere to find some baby Jedi, and she's well and truly off the radar, so you're the only person I can ask.

_ Kylo raises his eyebrows at him.  _

Well who the hell are you going to tell?

Any dead Jedi you care to be counselled by _ , Kylo says, rather snidely. _

Better the womp rat you know,  _ Finn replies, equally snidely, and doesn’t say out loud that if Kylo gives him advice he doesn't want then at least he can ignore it. Because it's Kylo fucking Ren, that's why. _

_ Kylo shrugs, and hands Finn the lightsaber. It glows in his hands. _

The Force is with you _ , Kylo says.  _ It's up to you what you do with it.

_ And maybe because Kylo handed him the weapon, maybe because Finn doesn't strike when he doesn't have to, maybe because of what Kylo just said, or maybe all of the above, Finn doesn't take the lightsaber and cut him in half. _

Tell me how to make sure I don't hurt others,  _ Finn says. _

Sure you aren't asking the wrong man?  _ Kylo says.  _

I reckon if I do the exact opposite of what you did, I'll be fine, _ Finn retorts, and Kylo smiles _ .

Knowing what he thought he now knew made Finn kind of apprehensive about going back to Takodana. Poe did not get it, and neither did Rose, because he hadn’t been able to properly explain. He wasn't sure where to start. 

Anyway, Poe chalked it up to disliking going back to places where he'd been captured, however temporarily, and Rose chalked it up to not wanting Maz Kanata to climb on a table, stare into his eyes, and deliver a pithy judgement on his character - it was getting to be a habit of hers. Neither of them were totally wrong, they just weren’t relevant. 

Finn was dealing with this Force-sensitive thing in his own way, mostly by not thinking about it, and partly by doing the control exercises that had been explained to him by a man in a dream. He didn't fancy Maz blurting out to all and sundry that he was a Jedi when he didn't even know what that meant, or if he wanted to find out. So he protested to Poe and Rose that his misgivings had nothing to do with anything they'd brought up, he was just very concerned about getting in the middle of whatever correspondence love affair Maz was having with Chewie, and that passed muster long enough for them to stop asking questions.

In the end, because of the correspondence love affair thing - and also because Chewbacca had been buying and selling weaponry at the dark of the moon for at least a generation before Finn had been born, and knew what he was about better than Finn did - Maz didn't really bother asking Finn too many questions, either. Nor did she make any dramatic declarations. There was no leaping onto tables.

She did say that Finn had found his path after all, but considering his career and the circumstances under which they'd first met, that wasn't a surprising remark and it had plenty of innocent explanations. 

“Doing my best!” Finn said, and went away to spend some quality time checking over the new shipment with thoughtful individuals who had nothing in common except for how serious and well-armed they all looked staring holes in the back of his head. Chewbacca asked him some questions later, but it was easy enough to dodge those by saying that surely, Chewbacca had earned some uninterrupted time with the missus.

She's not my missus, Chewbacca roared back. And she says you're hiding something.

“You got me,” Finn replied. “I forgot to resupply with your favourite jerky. I was hoping we could hold out with what's left in the cupboards.”

Sometimes, Chewbacca snapped, you remind me a hell of a lot of Han.

“Hey!”

  
  


_ He dreams again, and wakes up in the sand. For a second he thinks he's sinking into quicksand, like on Jakku, and flails to his feet with such undue haste that he nearly falls headfirst into a sinkhole. No, not a sinkhole, a courtyard. Long neglected. _

Where the hell is this? _ he demands of Kylo, who is staring into the - oh, into the twin suns setting. Right. This must be Tatooine, which makes that the homestead that Luke Skywalker grew up on. Finn didn't go with Rey when she buried the lightsabers, but she told him about it afterwards, and showed him pictures. _

_ Pretty part of the galaxy, if you like ‘deadly’ and ‘sandy’. Rey isn't much bothered by either.  _

Tatooine _ , Kylo says, following on from Finn's own thought.  _ I never came here much when I was alive. More tragic pasts. They run in the family.

Did you feel left out?  _ Finn snipes, more out of habit than anything else.  _ So you had to make your own?

_ Kylo doesn't reply, but Finn isn't expecting him to. Finn makes his way over to the dune where Kylo's sitting, and drops down to sit next to him.  _

The suns are pretty,  _ Finn will say that much, and the burning on his face is less than it might be. _

Do you remember what I told you on Dagobah?  _ Kylo asks. _

_ Finn rifles back through his memories of these dreams, which are never quite clear, and never quite sensible. If they were he'd know enough to hate Kylo, he's sure, and yet he never quite does, dreaming or waking. He has a thousand good reasons to: as many and more as Rey, after years of stormtrooper servitude under the shadow of the Knights of Ren. _

_ But then Rey refuses to hate Kylo too. It confuses and agitates Poe, so they let it be. _

No _ , Finn concludes _ . No idea.

The Dark Side can be like a mirror _ , Kylo says.  _ It takes what you bring to it. Fear, hatred, anger. So being afraid of yourself is a very bad start.

I'm not afraid -

So why not tell them all now?  _ Kylo says, cutting Finn off ruthlessly.  _ Why did you tell me, someone you don't trust, weeks before anyone else? Because nothing you tell me matters, is that right?

I _ , Finn says, and then says nothing more. Kylo's not wrong: that's what it used to be. _

Don't hide,  _ Kylo says wearily.  _ Be honest. And care. I only got the hang of all that at the very end, and it was almost too late.

_ Finn thinks that maybe, however Maz said he had improved on the frightened man she met in her cantina, he's still learning how not to run.  _

_ He remembers something else.  _ You said you didn't try to teach me _ , he says.  _ What did you mean?

_ Kylo looks strangely old, and - though not as remorseful as Finn has seen him - certainly as if he he has regrets. _

I sought out Force-sensitives in the ranks, _ he says,  _ and I tried to mould them into Knights. I think you learned to hide so well because you learned to hide from me. I am sorry.

Well shit _ , Finn says,  _ obviously I knew that. When you were in a temper nobody wanted to breathe too hard around you.

I should have done better. 

Nobody's going to argue with that, _ Finn says, and on instinct he shakes Kylo's shoulder, like he would shake Poe's.  _ Come on. Of all the things to feel guilty for, don't pick something I already forgave. You have so much to choose from.

I hurt you, _ Kylo says,  _ I have hurt so many people I care about.

Yeah, well,  _ Finn says.  _ It's done. 

_ Kylo looks at him like he's something entirely new. Finn no longer thinks his eyes look just like General Organa's.  _

I'm not saying for sure Rey has forgiven you _ , Finn says hastily,  _ and I'm not taking responsibility for saying anything that you did to anyone else is forgiven, but...

_ Kylo nods. His eyes flicker to Finn's mouth and then back up again, and for some reason, Finn doesn't let go of his shoulder. _

You should know,  _ Kylo says. _ I kissed Rey on Exogol. Before I died. Life-affirming sort of thing.

And then you went and died, _ Finn says, unmoved.  _

I kissed Poe twenty years ago, _ Kylo carries on.  _ Before he went to the Academy and I went wrong. 

Are you telling me this so I'll hate you?  _ Finn enquires.  _ So I won't forgive you any more? Don't be stupid, Ren. Jealousy is a waste of my time. Are you  _ trying _ to ruin this?

_ Kylo's mouth twitches like he's trying to hide a smile, or some less comfortable expression.  _ Just thought full disclosure was fair.

I don't care about that,  _ Finn says.  _ You couldn't get between us if you tried. I still care about what you did to me. But I've moved on. You should too. Start working on expiating some different sins. Maybe in a slightly more graceful way.

Maybe it's time _ , Kylo acknowledges. _

_ Finn gets to his feet - and then, before he leaves, he stoops down and kisses Kylo's unscarred cheek. _

There _ , he says, amused by the way Kylo's gone mottled scarlet from the neck up. Maybe the point of the helmet was to hide that ridiculousness.  _ Now you have the full set. 

Bastard,  _ Kylo grumbles. _

Thanks for everything,  _ Finn says,  _ and thanks for nothing, too. 

Don't mention it,  _ says Kylo. _

I never had any intention _ , replies Finn _ . 

The trouble with words was that they came a lot easier in dreams, when you weren’t worried about the reaction of the person you were talking to. It also helped if you were not slightly hungover from a boozy official dinner the previous day and facing down another week's worth of talks. Peace talks, probably. At least the third go round. Kaydel thought this time maybe these ones would stick.

Finn would believe it when he saw it. And in the meantime he'd work out what to say today, now, to tell Rey and Poe the truth. It was just the words weren’t coming out. But they hadn't been for months, and this was getting stupid.

His eyes wandered around the elegant hotel suite made available to them for the duration of the talks in Hanna City, Chandrila (selected for its historic associations, apparently: birthplace of Mon Mothma). It was well supplied with plush carpets, and sofas, and a decorative light display and a high-quality holonet hookup, and there was a nice little table set-up where a droid brought them food when they weren’t working. All very nice. Especially in the morning when a decent shower and a nice night’s sleep in a good bed made all the difference.

In the end, Finn waited until the droid had gone away, focussed on the nearest item in the overfilled fruit bowl, and summoned it to his hand - causing Rey to stare at him, and Poe to jump and complain as half the rest of the fruit tumbled off the bowl and seriously endangered his breakfast.

“Nice trick,” Rey said, trying awkwardly to be generous. 

“I mean, no, it was a really dumb trick,” Finn said.

“Yeah,” Rey agreed, maybe a bit too quickly.

“What trick?” wailed Poe, who had been up to his ears in briefings and caf and obviously hadn't paid any attention at all.

“The Force,” Finn said, levitating the pear again. “I'm using the Force.”

“Holy shit,” Poe said, and blinked at him. “What for?”

Rey laughed, and Finn felt a grin spread across his face. “Don't know,” he said, and took a bite out of the pear. “Still figuring that out.”


End file.
